Claire Foy as the young Queen in The Crown, on Netflix from 4 November.
Photograph: Alex Bailey/Netflix

With lifesize replicas of Buckingham Palace, a rampaging elephant, about 7,000 costumes and a £100m budget, The Crown is one of the most lavish television dramas ever made.

The two-series biopic, starting with the wedding of the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and written by Peter Morgan (the writer of the film The Queen), charts Britain in the second half of the 20th century. But it will not be airing on the BBC; instead it is appearing on the subscription service Netflix from Friday 4 November.

Stephen Daldry, its director, said: “It’s not just the story of the royal family. It’s the story of who we are and why we’re here and what we dream of. It’s the story about a nation.”

The drama stars Claire Foy as the young Queen and Matt Smith, the former Doctor Who actor, as Prince Philip. “When it’s about the royal family, it probably helps to have good tailoring and a lot of extras. They did have a lot of people around them and you couldn’t make it on the cheap,” observed Smith, who relies on a blond wig to make him look the part. “Wigs cost a lot of money.”

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Netflix has been best known for US commissions such as House of Cards and Stranger Things, but its move into British costume drama demonstrates the changing nature of the television industry where the BBC faces increasing competition from better resourced and more nimble international rivals.

With a running cost of around £5m an hour, the Crown compares with films such as The King’s Speech rather than the typical £1m-per-episode drama budget at the BBC or ITV. To make The Night Manager for the BBC, the producer had to solicit money from co-production partners AMC.

Danny Cohen, the BBC’s then head of television, has admitted that the corporation “couldn’t compete with the amount of money that Netflix were prepared to pay” for “a classic BBC subject”. Netflix, by contrast, committed to spending a £100m budget within 40 minutes of sitting down to discuss the drama.

Keen for half of all its global content to be original, Netflix has not only snapped up The Crown but has also bought the cult comedy hit Black Mirror from Channel 4. Meanwhile, its rival, Amazon, will launch the Grand Tour later in November, the £160m Jeremy Clarkson vehicle as the two aim to develop a new market in cut-price subscription television.

Netflix commissioned two series initially – a commitment that Morgan said “took us back a bit”. The series currently being filmed ends in the 1960s and Daldry has said he is “assuming we will carry on”, with each new series set to cover a decade potentially up to the Queen’s 90th.

The economies of scale from a two-series commitment meant replicas sets could be built and the directors were able to add to the much-lauded “authenticity”. The production includes a vintage train costing £200,000 and filming on location at Ely Cathedral.

Bringing the story up to date may yet prove more complicated for other reasons. When dealing with the royal family, a senior BBC executive still acts as royal liaison officer to request footage or interviews for corporation use. Meanwhile, in The Crown, King George VI is portrayed reciting a limerick on the morning of his daughter’s wedding that includes the word “cunt”.

Peter Morgan (left) and Stephen Daldry, writer and director of The Crown. Photograph: David Benett/Getty

But Morgan – who has successfully dramatised the period around the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 in The Queen – said at a screening of the first episode last week that he had kept his distance from the Palace, even declining an opportunity to meet the Queen, while the Palace’s line is that the programme is simply “a fictional drama”.

If the programme is recommissioned, a greater challenge is to predict how viewing habits are changing. Morgan said he found it harder to predict how the global television revolution itself would play out, as the lines blur between handheld screens and cinemas. “The way in which we will be watching this a few years down the line ... it’s almost as though I’m too unimaginative to predict,” he said. “Even if I do continue with this, we will be watching it in different way.”

The Poldark prince?

Promotional shots of Matt Smith rowing topless have already prompted tabloid comparisons with Aiden Turner, the star of Poldark on BBC1, although the actor himself is not so convinced.

The portrayal of Philip as a young Royal navy lieutenant in a rowing race on the Mediterranean had prompted the Mail on Sunday to declare, “It’s Philip the Poldark prince!”

“It’s definitely not,” Smith said, when asked if it was a “Poldark moment”. “I’m not in the same shape as Aiden. Hell no! But I think you do see my bottom at one point.”